“Losing the Atmosphere” a memoir by Vivian Conan: Memoir’s Statement on its Back Cover Includes a Multiple Personality Disorder Textbook Symptom

Back Cover:

“Vivian Conan grew up in two different worlds: Outside and Inside. Outside, she had friends, excelled in school, and was close to her cousins and brother. Inside, she saw faces that weren’t hers in her bedroom mirror…To others, her life seemed rich with work, friends music and boyfriends…But her mind and soul were filled with chaos and pain. Neither she nor her therapists could figure out why…” (1, Back Cover).)

1. Vivian Conan. Losing the Atmosphere: A Baffling Disorder, a Search for Help, and the Therapist Who Understood. New York, NY, GreenPoint Press, 2020.

Textbook Symptom:

“MPD patients often report seeing themselves as different people when they look into a mirror (2, p. 62).

2. Frank W. Putnam, MD. Diagnosis and Treatment of Multiple Personality Disorder. New York, The Guilford Press,1989. 

Note: Please search author's name in this blog for additional information in my past posts.

“Authoritarian Nightmare” by John W. Dean and Bob Altemeyer: President Trump may have “Multiple Personality Trait,” which is Not a Mental Illness

In the past, I have read of Mr. Trump’s use of pseudonyms (1), possibly used merely as a joke, which were not sufficient to diagnose multiple personality disorder, especially since he was too high-functioning to be considered mentally ill. However, that left open the possibility that he had what I call “multiple personality trait,” which is not a psychiatric diagnosis, but merely an imaginative, creative asset which I suspect is present in many novelists.

Recently, in Authoritarian Nightmare by John W. Dean and Bob Altemeyer, I was interested to learn that President Trump has a history of referring to “Trump” in the third person, as though he sometimes thought of “Trump” as a separate person or alternate personality:

“It could not be clearer. Every day, in every way, on every issue, Trump now wanted all GOP senators to support what “Trump” (notice the third person) wanted” (2, p. 93).

1. Wikipedia. “Pseudonyms used by Donald Trump.”

2. John W. Dean and Bob Altemeyer. Authoritarian Nightmare: The Ongoing Threat of Trump’s Followers. Brooklyn, Melville House, 2020. 

“ALL OF ME” (a memoir of Multiple Personality Disorder) by Kim Noble

Comment: At that time, mental health professionals had recognized her “dissociation” (memory gaps), which made her disorganized, but they had not distinguished between her kind of disorganization and the kind seen in a real psychosis like schizophrenia. So neither she nor most of her therapists had discovered her many nonpsychotic, undiagnosed, alternate personalities. But eventually they did make the correct diagnosis (a.k.a. dissociative identity disorder).

1. Kim Noble with Jeff Hudson. All of me: How I learned to live with the many personalities sharing my body. Chicago Review Press, 2011.

When Being Transgender and Having Dissociative Identity (Multiple Personality) Occur in the same person, is it by Chance or Causation?

They DO sometimes occur in the same person:

1. Emma Grove. The Third Person. Drawn & Quarterly, 2022.

2. https://academic.oup.com/smoa/article/10/5/100553/7040918

Comment: I don't know the answer. Who does?

“Sad Tiger” memoir of childhood rape by Neige Sinno concludes with euphemism for multiple personality: her “parts”

"The part of me that couldn’t hold it together has gone where she had to go, the other part, the part that wanted to stay, is me. But the split isn’t so simple, we are constantly thinking about each other. She hasn’t gone far…I hear her often, her ragged breath, the catch in her voice, I see her reflection in the mirror…She is always there, waiting, for I do not know what” (1, p. 131).

1. Neige Sinno. Sad Tiger. Trans. Natasha Lehrer. New York, Seven Stories Press, 2023.